Coates-Goshen

Coates-Goshen was the automobile marque of the Coates-Goshen Automobile Company in Goshen, New York. Founder Joseph Saunders Coates, born in 1859, built his reputation in harness racing, racetrack construction and high-quality sulkies and carts, including through the Miller Cart Company. He completed an experimental motor car in 1905 and organized the automobile company in 1908, adapting carriage-building craftsmanship to a conventional four-cylinder automobile. Public presentation followed at the 1909 automobile exhibition in New York's Crystal Palace. The frame was reportedly dropped near the scuttle to ease entry. Production automobiles are recoverable as four mechanical families. The 1909 Model 25 used a 25 hp four-cylinder on a 112-inch wheelbase, with town-car, runabout and Baby Tonneau bodies. The Model 32 used 32 hp and a 116-inch wheelbase; for 1910 its name became Thirty-Two without a mechanical-family break. A surviving 1910 advance-catalog listing held by the New York Public Library prices its two-passenger runabout at $2,700, four-passenger Baby Tonneau at $2,850 and five-passenger touring car at $2,900. The new Forty-Five used a 45 hp four on a 123-inch chassis; the same catalog lists corresponding bodies at $3,100, $3,250 and $3,400. Later reference tables differ, saying the Thirty-Two runabout disappeared and describing a four-seat Forty-Five runabout plus five- and seven-seat tourers. Those contradictions may reflect catalog timing, so both accounts are retained as body-availability evidence rather than inflated into new models. The largest 1910 Sixty paired a 60 hp four-cylinder with a 140-inch wheelbase and seven-passenger touring body. It appears in standard model tables but not that advance-catalog summary, leaving actual completion unresolved. Only 32 Coates-Goshen cars were built in total; no trustworthy model allocation or serial ledger survives. Buyers reportedly included actress Fritzi Scheff and actor Monty Woolley. A 1910 factory fire ended automobile production, and the company entered bankruptcy in October 1911. The Goshen factory building survived in later dealership and office use. Coates subsequently produced the separate Coates Tri-Car delivery tricycle around 1912–14, using a mid-mounted flat-twin and front cargo box; because it was a later commercial venture and marque identity, it is related history rather than a Coates-Goshen passenger model. Four catalog rows exhaust the advertised Coates-Goshen range, merging only the demonstrably continuous Model 32/Thirty-Two and preserving uncertainty about bodies and completed examples.

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